Monday night, Norm Chow was booked as the guest of honor at an athletic department fundraiser.
Today, he is scheduled to be at the State Capitol, where he’ll be recognized by the Legislature, the marquee figure in “University of Hawaii Day” festivities.
Thursday, there will be a meet-and-greet with university executives and community business leaders at Bachman Hall.
“I don’t know how he managed to get Wednesday off,” deadpanned a UH official.
When Chow took the UH head football coaching position in December, he said he understood the job wasn’t just about football. And, over the course of the intervening months, Chow has had ample opportunity to discover just how much it extends beyond the playing field.
Not that he has voiced so much as a syllable of complaint, you understand. But you get the feeling he is also looking forward to the start of his first UH spring practice a week from today and returning full-time to the field he knows best.
“Everything has been very positive, but we want to put a product on the field that people will be proud of and want to see us,” Chow said. “That is our primary goal, obviously. But that’s not the only role.”
Chow grasps that the UH job he has embarked upon is different from most of the 120 schools that play major college football. The landscape is unlike any other place he has worked.
Maybe it is because he grew up here or has followed UH from afar through 35 years in college football. But he gets the uniqueness and peculiarities of the position and the challenges inherent in it, something many of his predecessors didn’t.
Fred vonAppen (1996-98), for instance, railed at having to hobnob with the business community and notoriously boycotted a session at Washington Place called to help solicit community support. Some others have made it plain that they viewed their job as winning at the line of scrimmage, not the box office.
Coming off a 6-7 season and attendance that has dwindled to a six-year low, the program Chow has inherited needs victories to be sure. Winning games will go a ways to bringing back fans and pumping money into the athletic department’s thinning wallet.
But it also needs an articulate point man to sell the brand of the football team, the athletic department and the university. And, by virtue of his position, Chow has become the face for much of it. It is a role he has played on Kauai, on Bishop Street, at intermediate schools and beyond.
For somebody who was a career assistant coach, Chow has been remarkably adept at taking on the salesmanship and diplomacy of the position. He has been genial with boosters, at ease with politicians and on a similar wavelength with university officials. He believes the message that he spreads. He’s seen how it is done at Utah, USC, UCLA and elsewhere. And, as he pointedly shared with legislators in a tour around the UH athletic facilities, how it hasn’t been done in Manoa.
Spring practice begins soon for Chow. But a running start at the challenge of turning around UH football has been ongoing from day one.
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Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
